


He that Believeth in Me

by ishafel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-26
Updated: 2011-01-26
Packaged: 2017-10-15 02:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/156317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not so much what you believe as who you believe in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	He that Believeth in Me

He has a round table made, with thirteen chairs around it, and their names on the backs. He has a cup struck, and he gives them his blood to drink, and the flesh of the dead to eat. He makes them promises: power, immortality, love. Power.

He speaks to them in the words of better men. They believe him, because the penalty for heresy is death. They believe him because his blood is in their mouths, because he has made them into monsters. Some of them love him for it.

He dies and rises from the dead. Grindelwald never did. Arthur never did. Christ—they are wizards, and they do not know that name, or if they do they do not speak it before him.

Some of them die at his hand, and some of them die with him, that second time. Some of them survive. He does not rise again.

He was a wizard; he made them promises. The words he used were ancient and powerful. They come back with grave dirt under their fingernails, with the reek of fire on them: they come from their crypts, from the sea, from the pyres that mark the end of war.

They drank his blood, they died, his magic called them. They live with the mark of death upon them. They sit at his table, and they never look at his empty seat. He has saved them though he could not save himself.

They grow wise before they grow old. They bring peace to Britain. They rule it well, and profitably, and not entirely as he would have wanted. They live long enough to learn diplomacy, commonsense, forgiveness; they live long enough to learn to value what they have been given, and long enough to learn to rue it.

They live forever, because he told them they would, and he waits for them in the land of the dead because he was never promised eternity.


End file.
